The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

By Michael Sims

The greatest ever anthology of Victorian detective stories, The Dead Witness gathers the finest police and private detective adventure stories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including a wide range of overlooked gems.

'The Dead Witness', the 1866 title story by Australian writer Mary Fortune, is the first known detective story by a woman, a suspenseful clue-strewn manhunt in the Outback. This forgotten treasure sets the tone for the whole anthology as surprises appear from every direction, including more female detectives and authors than you can find in any other anthology of its kind. Pioneer women writers such as Anna Katharine Green and C. L. Pirkis take you from rural America to bustling London, introducing you to female detectives from Loveday Brooke to Dorcas Dene and Violet Strange.

In other stories, you will meet November Joe, the Canadian half-Native backwoods detective who stars in 'The Crime at Big Tree Portage' and demonstrates that Sherlockian attention to detail works as well in the woods as in the city. Holmes himself is here, too, of course - not in another reprint though - but in the first two chapters of A Study in Scarlet, the first Holmes case, in which the great man meets and dazzles Watson. Authors range from luminaries such as Charles Dickens to the forgotten author who helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', the first real detective story. Bret Harte is here as is Mark Twain, with his small-town lawyer detective. Naturally Wilkie Collins couldn't be left behind.

Michael Sims's new collection reveals the fascinating and entertaining youth of what would mature into the most popular genre of the twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9781408818855

Michael Sims

Michael Sims's six acclaimed non-fiction books include The Adventures of Henry Thoreau, The Story of Charlotte's Web, and Adam's Navel, and he edits the Connoisseur's Collection anthology series, which includes Dracula's Guest, The Dead Witness, The Phantom Coach, and the forthcoming Frankenstein Dreams. His writing has appeared in New Statesman, New York Times, Washington Post, and many other periodicals. He appears often on NPR, BBC, and other networks. He lives in Pennsylvania. michaelsimsbooks.com

Reviews for The Dead Witness

[katekf_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

As an avid reader of mysteries and literature, this collection was an amazing find. Sims has collected well known and little known mystery stories from the 1890s and put them all together in one place as well as writing a thoughtful introduction. Every story was a good read, some were scary and a few were even funny. I would recommend this book to someone who's read all of Doyle and Poe and is wondering what to read next. This provides a history lesson as well as chance to meet new authors.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)This fascinating new anthology, by an academe who has made a career out of putting together such anthologies, is a lively and unexpected guide to the early history of the detective story, whose invention is largely credited to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and which really flowered into mainstream success during the Victorian Age of the 1830s to 1900s. And indeed, by placing his only Sherlock Holmes story right in the middle of this massive book, editor Michael Sims is clearly showing just how much precedence there was leading up to what eventually became the most famous character in this genre's history; because with the very idea of a city police department not even invented in the real world until the early 1800s, many of the first stories about solving crimes came about in a roundabout way, whether through "Newgate" novels that salaciously glorified the criminals or "Sensation" novels that combined noir-like plots with Gothic moodiness and supernaturalism. And there's lots more surprises awaiting the eager Victoriana fan who picks this up, not an "all-star" compilation but with stories picked precisely because of their uniqueness and obscurity; for example, how many female writers found real success in this genre back then, or how much great crime fiction came from other areas of the Empire like Canada and Australia. And in the meanwhile, Sims throws in a few nonfiction tidbits to help us maintain a sense of society in general back then; of particular interest, for example, is a full reprint of the first long newspaper article to come out about the first Jack The Ripper slaying. A huge collection that kept an armchair historian like me flipping pages quickly, it comes strongly recommended to other Baker Street Irregulars, and the only reason it's not getting a higher score is the unavoidable fact that you won't like it at all if you're not already a fan of Victorian genre fiction.Out of 10: 8.9

[jbd1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A well-curated collection of short stories, excerpts, and even a bit of non-fiction (in the form of newspaper articles and an inquest transcript from one of the Jack the Ripper murders), Michael Sims' The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories (Walker & Co., 2012) is a thoroughly enjoyable volume.Some of the selections here will be familiar to many: Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and selections from A Study in Scarlet most specifically. But many of the other stories Sims includes may introduce the reader to new authors and characters, like Hesketh Pritchard's Canadian detective November Joe or Robert Barr's delightful Eugène Valmont. I also enjoyed Bret Harte's amusing parody starring Hemlock Jones, "The Stolen Cigar-Case."Sims' good general introduction is buttressed by shorter introductory notes to each individual selection, providing a bit of background about the authors and their work. It must have been no easy task to select the pieces for inclusion; I don't envy Sims the job, but he's done it well.